Playing To Win: Mobile Gamification Done Right

Gamification, or the use of game elements to promote desired behaviors among customers and employees, has been a popular business strategy for decades. Loyalty programs, cereal box prizes, employee-of-the-month schemes, hidden tokens within video games and applications — these are all examples.

But the always-on mobile age has vastly expanded opportunities for gamification. Integration with social networks means these experiences are shared with friends, acquaintances and co-workers. A smartphone-carrying employee or consumer might be drawn into a gamified experience at any time, wherever they are.

In fact, gamification represents the fusion of four trends: the explosion of social media usage, the mobile revolution, the rise of big data, and the emergence of wearable computing. Already, marketers, enterprises, and even governments are using gamification to achieve and expand their goals.

In a new report from BI Intelligence on the mobile gamification, we take a look at the overall market for gamification tools, services, and applications, analyze the elements that are critical to a winning gamification strategy, look at the various typology of mobile gamification uses, and detail how to quantify the impact of gamification tactics.

The classic and most well-known example in the mobile context is Foursquare: Early in its history, Foursquare spurred user acquisition and engagement with its focus on competition and rewards. But Foursquare has shifted away from this gamification dimensio n. More and more, it has become more of a social app to broadcast location to friends, and a location-based directory that competes with Yelp and Google.